My rating for the festival: 7 out of 10. The combination of nature and music was amazing, and for a techno festival the talent booked was diverse and deep. Beautiful people though as in most other techno festivals, people were kind of “in their own world”.
Warung Beach Club, in Itajaí, SC, Brazil, is the icon of underground house and techno music in Brazil, if not all of Latin America. For the first time in May 2014, Warung held a day festival and dance music lovers in Brazil could not miss it for the world!
Warung Day Festival was held in Curitiba, the capital of the state of Pará, about 6 hours away from Sao Paulo and 6 hours away from Florianópolis (by bus). It was held at the outdoor event space Pedreira Paulo Leminski, a space that was a basin in a small hill, with a lake and lots of green space. I am a huge fan of festivals in nature, and thought it combined nicely with Warung Beach Club which is also surrounded by a forest and water (the beach!).
I originally planned to make the trip myself and just meet my friend from Couchsurfing in Curitiba, Paul, who was also a big fan of dance music and a DJ. But, in the last minute my friend Rocio decided to come too, and the trip turned out to be very aggressive because we went to Pacha in Florianopolis the night before, and left the club at 5am to catch a bus around 8am to Curitiba. We got to sleep on the bus though, so we were ready for the festival when we got to Curitiba around noon!
Now, I had bought my ticket for $R 120 (around $50) online, and tickets were not available online anymore, but Rocio managed to buy a ticket for $R 40 from a scalper at the door. Lesson learned: If you cannot get tickets to an event in Brazil, do not fret, you can usually find scalpers at the door… just make sure they walk you in so you know it is real.
The Festival had 3 stages, the Warung Stage, the Pedreira Stage, and the Garden Stage. The first two are bigger and hosted the bigger names.
Even though the artists are of the underground genres, from Brazil or Europe, each DJ had his own style. My friends and I stayed at the Pedreira stage the most, and danced non-stop to the beats of Amine Edge and Dance, Ten Walls, and RolldaBeetz. I do love the Garden Stage though, it is wonderful how it is above the water! A highlight of the night was when we were at the Warung Stage, I think either Paul Ritch or Dubfire was playing, the music was so hot that the speaker in front of the actually caught in fire, and we were actually right next to it. Everyone had a scare and it was distinguished by a guy tossing a bottle of water on it.
The organization of the festival was top notch, the ambiance was perfect, the DJs were great, and the company was fun. The only complaint I had was that it ended too soon 🙂
